1941

Why is it, in our society, that a movie's success is rated on monetary value?As with "Always", another Spielberg flop, I love "1941".It's a shame when a movie's success can be judged on box office revenue only.It's a great deal of fun, and it's what movies should be about, a chance to laugh,to smile, and if done correctly, a chance to leave our lives for a couple of hours."1941" may not be at the top of all time movie favorites, they're saving that space for the BIG money makers,But it belongs at top of true movie lovers lists everywhere!And to Stash,It's seems that "Close Encounters of a Third Kind"was another Spielberg Film, before "1941", that some might consider as BIG!

As outlandish and hysterical as the war insanity of 1941 may seem, the plot tracks almost exactly a real incident reported the night of Feb. 24, 1942, in Los Angeles that began when Navy intelligence reported an attack by unidentified objects on their radar could be expected within the next 10 hours. Early the morning of the 25, radar tracked objects 120 miles west of Los Angeles and a blackout was ordered, triggering a flood of reports about enemy planes. Planes wre reported by the coast artillery near Long Beach (25 of them at 12,000 feet). Four batteries of anti aircraft guns at Santa Monica opened fire on a balloon with a flare and all hell broke loose, with so much ack-ack and searchlights scanning the sky that utter confusion reigned for at least three hours with reports of swarms of planes (hundreds in some cases) flying in at every altitude imaginable. Some 1,440 rounds of ammunition were fired at airplanes that never dropped a single bomb. There were reports four enemy planes had been shot down, including one that supposedly landed in flames at a Hollywood intersection. If this all sounds familiar, read on. At dawn, the only damage found was caused by stray ack-ack fire and traffic wrecks during the blackout. The Navy said the next day there were no enemy planes. The Army interviewed people and decided there were at least one to five planes over LA. The War Department then announced the planes must have come from secret air fields in California or Mexico or from Japanese submarines. The next day the Los Angeles Times criticized the "considerable public excitement and confusion" caused by the alert that scared 2 million people. One California politician wanted to know if it was a calculated prank to move California's defense industries inland to other states. The Washington Post followed on Feb. 27 with condemnation of the military's stubborn silence on the issue and the New York Times jumped in on Feb. 28 by calling the entire episode "incredible" and a display of "expensive incompetence." The movie is a wonderful glimpse of this real hysteria, a real incident and with quotes pulled right out of newspaper articles. When Robert Stack wants to know "where are the bombs?" that is the same question the Air Force and Navy asked when reports came in about the thousands of planes attacking LA. All this information is available from government files on Air Force history from the Government Printing Office in Washington, D.C. The Japanese, by the way never flew planes over LA, but did fly over Seattle, they said after the war. I LOVE 1941. It got everything absolutely right. Right down to Belushi's plane crashing into the street and crazies going off searching for hidden airfields near Bakersfield or Barstow or where ever. This was NOT a comedy. It was just about comical people. It should have won an Oscar for BEST DOCUMENTARY.

A Japanese sub off the coast of California looking for Hollywood so they can "blow the s**t out of something big". There's your plot.

Yeah, It's got some slapstick but this film cooks. It's sorta like a Murphy's Law about hysteria. What if everything went wrong? Could that happen? Yes! There's solid performances from everybody from the kid in the ferris wheel to Robert Stack (actually crying in a theatre while watching DUMBO). An intelligent piece of film work? No. But comedy doesn't have to be. M*A*S*H* it ain't, but it doesn't try to be either. Enjoy.

Steven Speilberg once asked a friend of mine, "Why didn't anyone like this movie?" Well, I think that I can answer that - "1941" is a gigantic in-joke. The people who are in on the joke are people who, like myself, have an oversized love and knowledge of the city of Los Angeles and it's history. I think that in the vast, world-wide movie-going public, this group probably comprises 1%. For that group, "1941" has a wonderful nostalgia value. And for the people in that 1% that have a twisted sense of humor and enjoy seeing nostalgic L.A. blown to bits, this movie really delivers. By the way, the folks with that twisted sense of humor probably account for about 1% of the original 1%.

I don't know why, but having grown up in L.A. and being an aficionado of it's history, I find it funny to see planes in a dogfight over Hollywood Blvd, the ferris wheel rolling off the end of Santa Monica Pier, and aircraft crashing into the La Brea Tarpits. But for non-locals and people unfamiliar with the paranoia that gripped Southern California in the wake of Pearl Harbor, this movie will likely seem confusing and silly. To the history buff with a twisted sense of humor (like me, proud member of the 1% of the 1%), the movie is not only amusing, but sometimes surprisingly accurate, historically. Robert Stack plays General Joseph Stillwell - a very real historical figure in L.A. history. Stack even bears a striking resemblance to the real General Stillwell. The whole movie is based upon a few real-life incidents of panicky anti-aircraft fire that occurred over L.A. in 1941/1942, as well as a Japanese sub that actually shelled an oil refinery near Santa Barbara. Like "Chinatown" (a film mistakenly thought to be an accurate account of L.A. water politics in the 1930s), "1941" borrows from real-life history and distorts it into pure fabrication. The difference is that while "Chinatown" is a noir drama, "1941" is an over-the-top comedy. Both films appeal to the historian, but as it is often said, comedy is much harder to pull off than drama. You either love "1941", or sit though it, saying, "huh?".

With all the stars in this movie, it's bound to be full of laughs. In one of the greatest comedies ever made (in my mind), a group of American Army soldiers, a lunatic pilot (Belusi), and local citizens take on each other and a submarine full of incompetent Japanese sailors with victory in their eyes. With an unbelievable collection of actors, and probably a film that Spielberg would like to forget he made, 1941 ranks up there with Caddyshack and other classic comedies.